Installation

Recommended reading

Considerable effort has gone into the construction of quality man pages. Users are encouraged to read the following man pages prior to using netctl:

netctl

netctl.profile

netctl.special

Configuration

netctl may be used to introspect and control the state of the systemd services for the network profile manager. Example configuration files are provided for the user to assist them in configuring their network connection. These example profiles are located in /etc/netctl/examples/. The common configurations include:

ethernet-dhcp

ethernet-static

wireless-wpa

wireless-wpa-static

To use an example profile, simply copy one of them from /etc/netctl/examples/<profile> to /etc/netctl/<profile> and configure it to your needs:

# cp /etc/netctl/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/netctl/my-wireless-wpa

Once you have created your profile, make an attempt to establish a connection using the newly created profile by running:

# netctl start <profile>

If issuing the above command results in a failure, then use journalctl -xn and netctl status <profile> in order to obtain a more in depth explanation of the failure. Make the needed corrections to the failed configuration and retest.

Once the profile is started successfully then it can be enabled using netctl enable <profile>. This will create the proper symlink for the profile to be used by netctl-auto@.service.

Note: The systemd service netctl-auto@<interface>.service will need to be enabled in order to allow automatic wireless connection at boot to become functional.

Note: If there is ever a need to alter a currently enabled profile. execute netctl reenable <profile> to apply the changes.

In a second terminal window copy the example file wireless-wpa from /etc/netctl/examples to /etc/netctl.

# cp /etc/netctl/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/netctl/wireless-wpa

You will then need to edit /etc/netctl/wireless-wpa using your favorite text editor and add the Encrypted Pre-shared Key that was generated earlier using wpa_passphrase, to the Key variable of this profile.